Grammars of enmity: a Golden Dawn of contemporary Greek democracy?

Far right groups like Golden Dawn are not a new phenomenon in Greek society, nor do they derive from the consequences of today’s financial crisis. The roots of fascist groups are to be found in an old tendency to rely on the vilification of a political enemy to rule.

The
entrance of Third Reich sympathizers into the Greek parliament reveals how fragile and vulnerable a system of government democracy is, in the hands of
unreliable state officials. It is a regime that permits the existence
of the most extremist political voices even when those voices
challenge democratic values and institutions. ‘For
the last 38 years we do not have democracy in Greece; the fact that
we won a position in the parliament is an indication of the weakness
of democracy’
declared the president of Chrissi
Avgi(Golden
Dawn),
Nikolaos Michaloliakos, when asked his opinion on democracy after he was elected a member of the Greek
Parliament on May 6. So what provided Michaloliakos’
party with the opportunity to participate in national and local
elections: was it the weakness of the Greek state authorities, or was democracy itself to blame?

Indeed, the most recent election results in May and in June suggest that opting for Golden
Dawn is increasingly acceptable, since the majority of its
voters are middle aged men from the middle class or the petty
bourgeoisie. Golden
Dawn
has thus managed to refute the stereotype of far right groups being mostly
supported by the young, the uneducated or the working class.

A
neo-Nazi group?

Golden
Dawn
was founded as a political organization in the early 1980s by
Nikolaos Michaloliakos, an open supporter of both Greek military
dictatorships (1936-1941, 1967-1974), who had been arrested several
times (in 1974, 1976, and 1978) for his terrorist activities as a
member of far right extremist groups. In prison, Michaloliakos met
the leaders of the military junta who ruled between 1967 and 1974.
After his release, he proceeded to publish the far right magazine
Golden
Dawn.
In 1985 he founded a populist and nationalist movement bearing the
same name, which was officially recognized as a political party in
1993.

Golden
Dawn’s
similarities with neo-Nazi groups are plainly visible in the party's
symbolism, with its flag resembling a swastika, its Nazisalutes
or its chant ‘Blood
and honour’, encapsulating its xenophobic and racist ideology. The party relies on a
strict military hierarchy and includes hit squads committed to
perpetrating hate crimes against migrants, an activity party members
see as a way to exterminate the enemy,
that is ‘every
foreign worker (who) leads to a Greek being unemployed’, as one of their main slogans goes.

Leading
members of Golden
Dawn
however distance themselves from Nazism and protest that they are
‘Greek
nationalists’,
claiming for instance that their preferred greeting refers to ‘the
way Metaxas used to salute’.
They consider ancient Greek civilization to be superior, although
they limit their references to Sparta’s regime and constitution,
which completely focused on military training and discipline. The
party’s historical falsifications do not stop with the idealistic
representation of Metaxas and his ultranationalist supporters. It
transcends national borders when members of Golden
Dawn question
the existence of gas chambers and of the Holocaust and state that
‘Hitler
has not been judged by history, because history as we know it has
been written by the winners’.

Ties
between Golden Dawn and the Italian neo-fascist party Forza Nuova,
as well as the German neo-Nazi NPD
also illustrate the National-Socialist character of the group. Yet no
hint of socialism may be found in
the party's official discourse,
due to the heritage of the Greek civil war (1946-1949) and of seven
years of the colonels’ dictatorship, whose propaganda relied on the
vilification of the ‘communist
enemy’
and the persecution of leftists. This lack of reference to socialism might be an added factor explaining why the contemporary Greek state has tolerated the
existence of hit squads masquerading as a political party until now.

The
roots of Greek national-populism

Far
right groups are not a new phenomenon in Greek society, nor do they
derive from the consequences of today’s financial crisis. The
roots of fascist groups may be sought in the age of the Greek civil
war and in the ongoing existence in its aftermath of an
ultranationalist front acting as a parallel state, legitimized by
the Greek junta. Political instability was the main characteristic of
the Greek state in the 1950s and 1960s. The left wing was
consistently portrayed by mainstream political parties as the ‘enemy
of the nation’ and
far right militias linked to the Greek police undertook to fight this enemy:
under the label of ‘indignant
citizens’,
they attacked left-wing politicians and their supporters. What brought the activities of these paramilitary groups to a stop, was the
assassination
in 1963
of Grigoris
Lambrakis,
a
prominent left-wing politician. But the same groups continued their action
under the regime of the colonels, this time without the cover of the
‘indignant citizens’ label.

Nostalgia for fascist regimes and
practices did not vanish with the regime change in 1974, as some
members of former radical right groups either joined the right wing
of the conservative party New
Democracy, or the far right party LAOS
(Popular
Orthodox Rally),
while others continued their unconcealed thuggishness against
leftists and minorities within the hit squads of Golden
Dawn.

According
to some Greek politicians, including former Ministers of National
Security, the Greek authorities were well informed of the involvement of Golden
Dawn activists in
attacks
against leftist students
and knew all about the reappearance of these ‘indignant
citizen’
movements since the beginning of the 1980s. But there was no move on the part of government to outlaw these far-right extremist groups. On the contrary,
Golden
Dawn has been suspected of developing close ties with the Greek police. This became apparent in the
latest election when it was revealed that one out of two police
officers had voted for them. Overall, the party obtained 7% of the
popular vote both in May, a result it maintained a few days ago, and has now entered the Greek parliament.

Many media and academic commentators across Europe have ascribed the frightening rise
of fascism in Greece to the frenzy over austerity and the
financial crisis. This is only one side of the coin. The other one
has to be sought amongst the Greek main political actors. Just a few
days before the general election of May 6,
members of the coalition government and the mainstream media took to scapegoating migrants who were now accused of being responsible for the sociopolitical failures of the
country. Together they orchestrated the broadcasting of a range of racist
comments. The minister of public health labelled migrants a ‘sanitary
bomb threatening the Greek people’
and the minister of public order proudly announced the opening of
concentration camps for migrants. The use of xenophobic discourse by
public authorities and the participation of the extreme right wing
formation LAOS
in
the coalition government spread the fear of the ‘Other’ in the
Greek society and legitimized further voting for the far right. These
7% of Greek voters who opted for Golden Dawn may have been
experiencing an extreme collapse of their financial security, and
they blamed the migrant 'Other' for it – too easily forgetting that
any attack against this Other is also an attack against democracy. In
today’s Greece, both of them are in danger.

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Security for the future: in search of a new vision

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